Religion and money

Religion and Money is an interdisciplinary project headed at the Coin Cabinet at Museum of Cultural History. The project will exploit key parts of the museum's collection, and combine results from field work in multiple locations in Norway, Greece and Turkey.

Madonna from Enebakk. Photo: Museum of Cultural History, UiO

We aim towards a combination of historical records, material culture and cutting edge theory to fill the concepts of religion, money and morality with new insight.

This project will address the issue of religious thought and the perception and use of money in ancient and medieval societies by looking at religion, money and trust in relation to one another. In so doing we will address people’s interactions with religion, with language, with the economy, and with the material culture and physical environment in which they lived, and in their conception of life and afterlife.

The project will be carried out through an interdisciplinary approach, utilizing a considerable body of historical records and material culture interpreted in parallel with the methodological perspectives from archaeology, history, numismatics, theology and anthropology. The mutual interrogation of this material has never been carried out.